In sewing, there are many known ways of embellishing a piece of fabric. Commonly, a piece of base material, for example, the blanket portion of a quilt or the fabric that makes up a skirt will be embellished with an ornamental design. For example, the base material may be embellished with a smaller swatch of cloth applied to the base material and stitched in place to create a design, pattern, or picture. This technique is generally known as appliqué. Generally, appliqué techniques are very time consuming and performed by hand.
Similarly, other materials, such as ribbon or “pop up” pieces of fabric, may be sewn onto a base piece to create a desired visual affect. Several presser feet have been developed for the purpose of applying ribbon with a sewing machine, however these feet are generally made such that an operator has to thread the ribbon through the presser foot and sew the ribbon onto the base piece with a straight stitch or a zigzag stitch. The presser foot guides the ribbon along the base material. Thus when using these presser feet, an operator is limited in the ways in which they may apply the ribbon. If a wider stitch or more ornate application is desired, the embellishment must generally be created by hand.
Generally, embellishments are manually created. Embellishing garments is therefore time consuming, and manually created designs are difficult to reproduce with precision and accuracy.